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Given all the Dwayne Johnson movies always on the way (including two on the 2026 movie schedule), it’s almost unbelievable that acting isn’t his first career. He first became famous for his WWE career before he earned his first role in a movie in 2001’s The Mummy Returns. As he celebrates 25 years in the profession, “The Rock” recalled what his first day as a thespian was like as if it were yesterday.
Johnson recently joined The Hollywood Reporter’s Actors’ Roundtable to talk with some of the most acclaimed male performers of 2025. During the conversation, he recalled his first day on the set of The Mummy Returns with these words:
I think it was planned by something more powerful than me, but also, I wanted to grow and to challenge myself, and transitioning into Hollywood was something that I definitely wanted. With my first movie, The Mummy Returns, we were shooting in the Sahara Desert, and I was so sick — I went over there and probably ate something that I shouldn’t have — and it was 110 degrees, but I was freezing and wearing a blanket.
The Mummy Returns was shot in Morocco and Jordan before moving to England later in production. Talk about an adventure for The Rock on his first acting credit. At the time, he was in his late 20s and very green to what it was like to be on a major production. As he shared, he was quite sick on his first day on the job, but something else happened:
Stephen Sommers, the director, comes over, ‘You okay?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah!’ I’d never acted before. He calls ‘Action!’ We have our scene. And when he said, ‘Cut!’ I went, ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.’
Despite the physical pain Johnson was going through while he was playing Scorpion King on set, he said he realized almost immediately that he was happy with his career pivot. Given his condition, that feeling wasn’t a given, and yet that’s how the story goes.
Recently, The Rock had a chance to thank Brendan Fraser for his role in his career shift (amidst the pair both being in acclaimed 2025 movies). He said that Fraser had the power to not take a chance on him, but he welcomed him to the film “with open arms.”
The movie went on to make $433 million worldwide, becoming the No. 7 highest-grossing film of 2001. From there, he would go on to do the spinoff The Scorpion King, and slowly inch his way into becoming a bigger and better actor.
Dwayne Johnson has primarily been known for his work in action movies, but his latest role in The Smashing Machine saw him transitioning into a dramatic one to portray MMA fighter Mark Kerr. The movie was a box office bomb, but Dwayne Johnson and his co-star Emily Blunt both are among the 2026 Golden Globe nominees for the Benny Safdie film.
Following The Smashing Machine, Johnson has two potential blockbusters on his hands in 2026, where he’s getting to continue to do the career he loves. First, he’ll star as Maui in the live-action Moana movie coming this July before returning to the Jumanji movies for the fourth installment with Jack Black, Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan, coming out in December. So, while he may have been sick on his first day of acting, clearly going to work that day and performing through it was well worth it.
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